Gary Flanagan    Such an electronic music event in New Brunswick was a long time in coming. Maybe there have been similar gatherings before and I simply didn't know about them. After all, the N.B. electronic scene is nothing if not fragmented. But it's also eclectic, as I think the night of October 20th, 2001 has proven. The night of Electrobash.
    I got a drive up to Fredericton with Gary Flanagan in a rented car. His K-Car turned out to be not so Reliant, it broke down on him earlier that week in St. Andrews. I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, maybe 3 hours, and the blue morning sky had a horrific brightness to my still tired eyes. Seeing the upper half of a dog by the side of the road at one point didn't help any. What's more, I stuck an incredibly eerie Archangel vs. Atmospheh-rhyccx tape in the deck. Would Gary and I descend into madness before our trek was over? Put it this way, how could we be sure we weren't mad to begin with?
    It was probably a little after 11:00am when we arrived in the capital city. It had been at least four years since last I was there, and I forgot just how small everything seemed. This coming from a Saint Johner! Maybe they keep the buildings short so that all those drunken college kids won't have far to fall, I don't know.
    At the Gallery Connexion Gary introduced me to his co-conspirators: Jenn Brayton and Rod Marquart. Jenn is a DJ and professor (?!) and Rod is the brains behind the high tech jam session that is Drums & Machines. It's always weird putting faces to people you've only heard about. For example, I expected Jenn to have feathers or something, and Rod didn't bear much resemblance to the Mad Hatter at all! In addition to meeting the B and M of BFM Productions, I got to meet and pester the many technical chaps who would be instrumental in the success of the event. Of course what I remember most was that Andy, who provided various lighting and effects devices, was a collector of fantasy knives. For those of you who are curious, his hoard is very Gil Hibben.

Jenn Brayton    Setting up was probably the longest, most gruelling part of the day. It wasn't even noon and the 'bash was set for 8:00pm. How ever could we endure such a marathon of... work?! I'd like to say I helped everyone out a lot and was indispensable, but that'd be dishonest, heh heh. In fact, I was pretty useless for the first couple of hours. I'm sure my penis-oriented sense of humour only impaired people's concentration. It was only after a tremendous pop from the speakers that I pointed out proper FOLO protocol when checking machines along the signal path. About mid-afternoon a group of us went off to fetch the lighting equipment from Tony's Music. We didn't get anywhere until jumpstarting Jenn's SUV with "nipple clamps" though. Upon arrival, there was befuddlement to be had by all as Gary showed up to pick up the gear in the name of Mr. Marquart only to have the staff denying any such arrangement was ever made. This was the sort of incident that made me glad I never spearhead cultural events of any kind. After milling about the music store for ten minutes or so someone finally found a little scribble about it on a piece of note paper, with BFM Productions misspelled at that!
Scott Kitchen: the official Electrobash sound guy!After some legal/insurance-related jiggery-pokery we finally had the lights. Now that we had the lights, we were free to blow a fuse during Gary's sound check. Hooray! I doubt I was the only one mortified at that moment. Fortunately the aforementioned technical chaps worked around the power issue by strategic use of the many extension cords at their disposal. But we hadn't run out of things to fret about yet, oh no! With only a couple of hours left we scratched our heads as to where Troy Chenier of JetProjectLabs could have been. At Andy's place Gary placed a call to CFMH. I figured there's always at least someone who'd know him at the station at any given time, but NO! It was then I remembered a post Troy made on the Giraffecycle forum regarding the possibility of his vehicle dying halfway there. Luckily when we returned to the gallery Rod confirmed that Troy had indeed made it to Fredericton and didn't have to resort to eating that half-dog for survival purposes after all. PHEW! Speaking of eating, Rod, Gary, Andy and I set out around this point to get some pre-show sustenance. We pulled into a Wendy's and ingested a dubious amount of nutrition. We also formed an unholy cabal, the purpose of which I shall keep secret until I reach the grave! Before sound checks could be completed a video projector and VCR had to be obtained for Troy's act. The former was not long in coming, but the latter cut it quite close if I recall. The last two hours seemed to fly by oddly enough, as the rest of the day previous
Spoof Le Grandseemed a slow crawl. Perhaps our perception of time is inversely proportionate to stress levels? Andy field-trained me on the use of the camcorder and asked if I would tape bits and pieces of the first couple of hours while he was away. If I maintain he said "bits and pieces" consistently enough, that will become the official, incontrovertible record and I cannot possibly be accused of having fallen down on my duties. Now all there was to do was wait for the audience to arrive.
    My friend Christian and his girlfriend Jill were among the early attendees. Before seeing him I had no idea how he was going to make it up, or if he would have been able to make it at all. I recorded a few other folk making their way into the gallery, one of which was none other than the Innercityjazzman himself, Alex Pearson. It seemed to me that by 9:00pm we hadn't quite gotten a goodly-sized crowd. Oh well, it is an electronic music event in New Brunswick after all. Besides, the first act was starting.
    Spoof Le Grand was parked behind his computer gazing intently into his monitor, incessant mouse clicking and rhythmic head-bobbing the only movement. I taped about five minutes of this head-bobbery close-up before giving in to my aching feet and propping the camcorder up over the wall of the gallery's office. I guess you could say Spoof's performance was the least dynamic of the evening, but I must say there were some impressive sounds coming out of his CPU. I wonder what software he was using... of course from my vantange point he could have been playing solitaire or trying to unleash the pigman in a Lizzy Kisekae file and I wouldn't have known it! At one point the music seemed to stop abruptly, and there was a momentary look of shock on Spoof's face before the four-on-the-floor beats continued. Maybe he had gotten the pigman to work after all?
    JetProjectLab's performance
JetProjectLabs consisted of Troy singing over a well-done video presentation of footage from a bizarre range of sources - everything from interviews shot in Halifax to Monty Python to martial artists pummelling each other with three-piece-rods. That last bit of footage appeared during my personal favourite JPL track, "Run Line", which I told Troy sounds like a "child molester running from the law". I was excited to see that Wurtscorp was offering a chance to win dinner and a movie with King Friday, but alas, I did not have ample time to write down the contest details. DAMN IT! At times Mr. Chenier danced spastically as if in a trance. In spite of enjoying the raucousness, I couldn't help but wonder how he could just stand there singing while Ojud "Jud" Crandall oppressed poor CD-making Derek Wurts.
    Jenn and her friends DJ'ed in between sets. The ears of Christian, Alex Pearson and myself all perked up when we heard "MC Bruce Lee" emanating from the other room. Were I a Cantonese ruffian, I would have started a jeet-kune-do brawl right then and there. One can dream, can't one?
    Gary made a strangely creepy entrance, decked out in a suit and skinny tie. Anyone remember wrestler Irwin R. Sheister? It seemed to me that Gary's Poly 800 was perhaps a few cents flat of his backing tracks, and I think I saw him making adjustments throughout, in between belting out vocals and executing Power Ranger-esque gestures that is. I'm not sure if this was just me, but things seemed to pick up during "Hardcore", and again during the Ganymede remix of "All We Are", at which point Christian could no longer resist the urge to get down, elbows flying every which way.
Filling in between setsBeing a close personal friend of Gary's, you can expect some bias if I were to tell you I enjoyed it all, but I was genuinely horrified to have been pointed out by him as he introduced the Dream Sequencer track. Bastard! May the gorilla from the old Spiderman series be unleashed upon you! Oh, and the snare sound in "Kugelsicher" was deafening, and would have explained the temporary hearing damage. Gary wants me to blame the sound man for that.
    After Gary finished I was resting my poor fatigued feet in the lounge area when I heard some familiar music, but the title eluded me. Suddenly I recognized it as Drums & Machines, and leapt to my feet.
    "This may be the piece de resistance" I said to Alex.
    Rod Marquart displayed the most musicianship of the evening with his adept drumming, and though he expressed concerns about his performance afterwards it all sounded fine to my ears. The ubiquitous D & M trademarks were there, namely that buzzy guitar-like sound and the pitch-shifted "I am tremendously hung" vocals. And how could I fail to mention that Rod was accompanied by Shan Monster and her serpentine, Moroccan-influenced freestyle dancing.
Rod Marquart of Drums & Machines (left) and Shan Monster (right)There seemed to be a semi-circle of mostly young males squatting on the gallery floor, lending the whole performance an almost peepshow quality. I'm sure I heard Eddie Valiant exclaim in disbelief "She's married to Roger Rabbit?!". I had a tremendous smirk on my face the whole time. In spite of Shan's mesmerising stage presence, I could still see Rod's arms flailing wildly with every drum fill, a pattern burned into my retinas or some such unhealthy thing. It occurred to me that Drums & Machines achieved a greater effect live, not always the case with music that is so often created in a studio mindset. The notions of old and new, of neo-tribalism all seemed to congeal that night. One would be safe to guess attendance peaked for the final hour.
    And that, my friends, was Electrobash as I saw it. Attendance wasn't huge, but then if it was I'd wonder what BFM were doing wrong to attract such an indiscriminately large crowd. The 'bash was a pleasant exception to an otherwise alienating series of experiences with live music, and I met a lot of friendly folk in the process. That's certainly something that doesn't happen by listening to a CD-R at home.